Four Hope seniors dedicate themselves to watch every basketball game this season

Wednesday

Feb 23, 2011 at 12:01 AMFeb 23, 2011 at 11:10 PM

Hope College seniors Nate DeLoof, Nate Martin, Clint Mast and Nick Holst have been through it all with the Flying Dutchmen basketball team this season.

JON SCHULTZ

Four thousand, four hundred and forty-four miles, 360 chicken nuggets and 19 wins, six losses and counting.

Four guys — Hope College seniors Nate DeLoof, Nate Martin, Clint Mast and Nick Holst — have been there through all of it with the Flying Dutchmen basketball team this season.

The group has attended every game every step of the way on the road to a Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association regular-season title and have become all but part of the team in the process.

They shared in the glory as the Flying Dutchmen secured the championship outright with a win over Olivet on Feb. 9 and congratulated coach Matt Neil after the game.

“He knows who we are,” said Martin, a Fennville native majoring in computer science. “He actually gave us all hugs … because he was pretty pumped up.”

The foursome gets to stay at home this week as Hope will play every game they can in the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association Tournament at DeVos Fieldhouse because they’re the top seed.

The tournament tips off tonight with a quarterfinal game against Alma College and will continue Friday and Saturday night if the Flying Dutchmen keep winning.

Like a typical college pipedream, this one started as a joke.

Two of the friends — Mast and Holst — attended all the games the year before, and they began tossing around the idea of doing it again even though the team played two games in Orlando for a tournament.

“We talked about it more, ‘Let’s actually do this, it’s senior year,’” Martin said. “At that point we decided, ‘Why should we miss any other games?’ So we should just do all of them.”

Other than travel costs, they didn’t run into many major obstacles, except, of course, having to cater to a picky eater.

“Before all the away games, we always go and get McDonalds, we all always get 10 piece Chicken McNugget meals,” said Holst, an engineering major from Jenison. “I’m actually just kind of a picky eater. … We just started doing it and we started winning while we were doing it, so now it’s just kind of lore.”

They started the nugget ritual during the RDV Sportsplex D3 Classic in Orlando, where Hope won twice at the beginning of a stretch where it won 15 of its next 16 games.

While the processed chicken may have had little to do with what actually transpired on court the rest of the season, the Orlando trip has been pinpointed by the team as a time when it bonded off the court.

Between games, the Flying Dutchmen attended the Orlando Magic’s game against the Dallas Mavericks, one of the chemistry building activities that weekend.

Sure enough, their four fans were there as well.

“Once the team found out we were down there … they wanted to show us that they appreciated us,” Holst said. “(The coaches) got us extra tickets for that, so that was really cool.”

Mast’s favorite part, other than the memories he and his friends make along the way, has been the players’ reaction to seeing them at every game this year, or for Mast and Holst, for the last two years.

His favorite game was when Hope beat Calvin after trailing by 18 points in the first half at Van Noord Arena.

“Just a great atmosphere for the game, and how excited we were and not having my voice for a week after the game,” said Mast, a management major from Hudsonville.

The group lived in Durfee Hall their freshman year, along with Will Bowser and Ty Tanis, who are now seniors on the basketball team.

They know the players well, and even shoot around with them occasionally. The four of them also are on their own intramural basketball team.

“I would say we feel like we’re kind of an extension of the team,” Holst said. “We hang out with the players on weekend. We lived with half the team in the dorm.”

They received some help along the way from people like Anne Bakker, Hope’s ticket manager who found them deals at hotels in Wisconsin and Florida.

Their future travel plans remain up in the air.

If Hope wins the MIAA Tournament, the Flying Dutchmen will for sure be on their way to the national tournament and bidding for the team’s first NCAA Division III title.

The Division III final four is March 18-19 in Salem, Virginia.

“We plan on going as far as the team goes,” Martin said. “We’re kind of almost hesitant to make any spring break plans, because if they make the Final Four, that will be going on. So, we don’t want to double book ourselves.

“We’re in it for the rest of the season.”

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